HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Alabama Department of Transportation Director John Cooper said he agrees with Mayor Tommy Battle that Huntsville needs more and better roads.

But Cooper has a problem with the mayor suggesting - as he did in a news conference last week -- that Madison County is not getting a fair share of road construction dollars from Montgomery.

During a wide-ranging Tuesday interview with The Huntsville Times/AL.com, Cooper said Madison County is home to 1.84 percent of Alabama's total state-maintained road lane miles. However, the county received 3.26 percent of road construction contracts awarded statewide by DOT in the past five years - $142.3 million total - and 3.06 percent of all awarded contracts, or $221.9 million, over the past decade.

Madison County has also done well on what DOT calls authorizations: road projects green-lighted for engineering, right-of-way acquisition and utility relocation prior to construction.

Cooper said 3.3 percent of statewide road project authorizations over the past five years - totaling $165.3 million - have been for Madison County. Looking out 10 years, it's 3.06 percent and $306 million. The 20-year figure is 3.10 percent and $543.8 million.

"When you look at these numbers," said Cooper, "we don't believe you can make a case that Madison County has been treated unfairly."

Battle has become an outspoken critic of ALDOT's revised 10-year road enhancement plan, released in May, which delays construction of Memorial Parkway overpasses at Lily Flagg and Byrd Spring Road until 2019. Other projects - including extending Interstate 565 past Shields Road and four-laning Alabama 53 to Ardmore, Tenn. - were taken out of the plan entirely due to lack of funding.

During a news conference alongside the Parkway last week, the mayor urged Huntsville residents to contact Cooper and Gov. Robert Bentley about the Lily Flagg and Byrd Spring overpasses. A second "Restore Our Roads" event is planned for Wednesday afternoon to lobby for quicker action on a planned Parkway overpass at Mastin Lake Road.

Double whammy

Cooper, who lives in Jackson County and is a former executive at Avocent in Huntsville, said a combination of declining gas tax revenues and rising road construction costs has left DOT with just $150 million a year to spend statewide on new or expanded roads.

The agency's professional staff and division engineers whittled what had been a five-year, $4 billion transportation improvement plan down to $1.5 billion over 10 years. Cooper said projects that stayed in the plan generally provided a safety benefit, relieved traffic congestion and/or completed a corridor that had already been started.

For example, DOT is moving forward with extending the on-ramps at the Calera exit on Interstate 65 in Shelby County. The original ramps had been blamed for multiple wrecks and at least three traffic deaths.

"If we see a significant safety issue," said Cooper, "it rises to the top of our priority list."

Don Arkle, DOT's assistant chief engineer of policy and planning, said the I-565 extension in Huntsville was likely hurt by its estimated $100 million-plus pricetag. Adding a third lane to I-65 between Pelham and Calera in Shelby County was pushed to the shoulder for the same reason.

Said Cooper: "We do not think we can justify spending a year of the state's capacity budget on a single project in a single place to accommodate a single group of users."

'Superstreets'

The highway director said Battle was not lobbying for the Parkway overpasses a year ago. During a meeting on Aug. 10, 2012, Cooper said Battle and Huntsville Director of Traffic Engineering Richard Kramer "proposed that we not build the overpasses on the Parkway but that we move to a concept called superstreets."

Battle publicly referenced superstreets after being elected to a second term last August. Common in Michigan, a superstreet is a restricted crossing U-turn where all traffic from the side road must turn right to access a U-turn ramp.

"It's an interesting concept," Battle told The Times on election night. "Overpasses are expensive and take a long time to build. Superstreets could be done quicker."

Cooper said he likes the superstreets concept and thinks it could help "add life" to congested corridors like the Parkway and U.S. 280 in Birmingham where it is cost-prohibitive to buy additional right-of-way.

"I don't have arguments with the mayor that more funding is needed or that the (Parkway) overpasses would be preferable," said Cooper. "But I do believe we'll be able to ameliorate these traffic issues meaningfully in the interim with steps of this type.

"It's not perfect, and it's not the most desirable solution," he said. "But I believe it is the most desirable affordable solution."

Shedding light on gas taxes

Battle and other elected leaders have long complained that Madison County produces far more gasoline tax revenue than it gets back from the state in the form of road construction projects. Cooper shed some light on how that process works.

DOT receives only about 55 percent of the state's total gasoline tax revenues, he said. Nearly 45 percent goes directly to counties and cities; the Alabama Department of Revenue also gets a slice.

Cooper said DOT cannot give Madison County back 80 percent of locally-generated gas taxes because the agency receives less than that to begin with. An 80 percent gas tax return pledge crafted by local officials and signed by Bentley while campaigning for governor in 2010 was "an impossibility," he said.

"The people who devised the promise should have known it was an impossibility," said Cooper.

Of the Madison County-generated gas taxes that DOT actually received, he said the agency "sent back to Huntsville more than 80 percent" in both 2010 and 2011.

While DOT severely pruned its 10-year plan for building new roads, Cooper said the agency has committed $430 million a year to resurfacing existing state routes and $8 million more toward bridge replacement.

"For all of our shortcomings, Alabama has a decent system of primary roads," he said. "We made a decision that with the situation we find ourselves in, it is more important to preserve what we have ... than it is to build more."